


The Soldier and the Girl

by bethejerktomybitch



Series: Marvel Soulmate AUs [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7770457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethejerktomybitch/pseuds/bethejerktomybitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your words are on my skin.”</p><p>His gaze wanders down to his forearm, where barely visible Cyrillic letters are engraved into his skin, and for the first time he realizes that they form two words. Her words. </p><p>“Yours are on mine.”, he finally replies, calmly, quietly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Soldier and the Girl

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first work in this fandom, and I hope you like it. It will probably be the first in a series of Marvel Soulmate AUs. 
> 
> Oh, and English is not my first language, so I hope it's not too badly written.

The first time the Winter Soldier meets her, she’s sitting next to him in a cold cell in some Hydra facility. There is a dead, sharp look in her icy blue eyes and a faint air of danger to the way she seems to constantly be aware of all of her surroundings. 

The Soldier isn’t sure if he’d be able to take her down. 

It make him uncomfortable, something he’s not supposed to feel, and neither of them says a word until she’s dragged out by two heavily armed Hydra agents.

He can hear her scream in agony just seconds later, and her voice stirs something inside of him. Sympathy, maybe? He doesn’t know, and he pushes the thought as far from him as possible.

The Soldier isn’t supposed to feel sympathy. 

***

The second time the Soldier meets her – he’s very sure it’s the second time, because he hasn’t been wiped since their last encounter, although she most certainly has been – they are in the same dull, grey cell, but she seems nothing like the unspeakable threat from before. 

She’s lying on the ground, broken and battered, bruises and cuts covering almost every inch of her pale skin. Her body seems weirdly small, almost fragile, and the Soldier feels a sudden rush of protectiveness. He can’t stop himself from placing his hand on her shoulder in a reassuring, comforting gesture.

You are not alone, he thinks, but he isn’t sure if the thought is directed towards the girl or towards himself. 

She turns her head and her mouth twitches into something that almost resembles a smile, and for a brief moment, the Soldier feels like he’s more than just a weapon. Like he’s human. 

The feeling only lasts until he’s taken to the room with the cold again where everything that makes him who he is is taken from him until he once more turns into a perfect weapon. 

***

The next time the Soldier meets her – he doesn’t really know if it’s the third or some other time, because, well, his time was being divided between cryo, killing, and being wiped – she is sitting opposite of him in the back of a dark transporter.

Her face is stone-cold and so is his. There is nothing human in either of them. 

Their handler – someone whose name the Soldier vaguely remembers to be Mikhailov – is speaking to them in a low, emotionless voice. He’s giving orders, something the Soldier is used to by now, and he can tell that the girl – a threat, once more – is nothing more than a tool as well. 

“Kill everyone.”, Mikhailov says. “No witnesses.”

The Soldier jumps out of the transporter with the deadly precision of a predator as soon as they reach their destination, the girl right behind him. He gestures to the right and she just nods, and then they start doing what they were told. Killing everyone.

Because, really, there’s nothing else they could do.

***

The first time Bucky meets her, he’s still less of himself and more of the Soldier. They have taken out most of the armed men guarding the building, and seeing the girl fight has just proven his very first evaluation of her. She is dangerous. A threat.

Just like him, she handles guns and knives with an extraordinary expertise, and she’s probably able to kill a guy in 250 different ways only using her left hand, but there’s something else. 

She can throw grown men through the air without even touching them, like she’s creating a force field around herself. She only does it three or four time throughout the whole battle, but it’s enough to freak him out a little. 

He brushes the distraction off. There are still men inside the building, and he can’t allow himself to be distracted during battle. 

The girl’s light steps tell him she’s now standing next to him, and he wants to turn and tell her the plan on how to take full control of the building, but before he even has the chance to speak, he hears her voice for the first time, soft, low, and with a slight accent he can’t quite identify.

“Cover me.”

She’s gone in the blink of an eye, just like that, but he stands frozen in place. There is a strange, burning sensation in his right forearm and the feeling that this is wrong, that he is more than a weapon, is back again, stronger than ever. At this moment, the Soldier is just a thought in the back of his mind, barely more than a memory. 

It takes him a long time to recover and follow her inside, and when he finally does, she’s already taken out all of the remaining men. They stand facing each other, breathing heavily, and it’s him who speaks first, but the words that leave his mouth belong to the Soldier.

“You jeopardized the whole mission!” 

She flinches like he’s punched her and her hand shoots up to her left collarbone. Her voice is matter-of-factly but her face tells otherwise as she says:

“Your words are on my skin.”

His gaze wanders down to his forearm, where barely visible Cyrillic letters are engraved into his skin, and for the first time he realizes that they form two words. Cover me. 

“Yours are on mine.”, he finally replies, calmly, quietly. 

There is a long silence until a helpless look that doesn’t really suit her features appears on her face. Her voice is hollow as she asks: “What does this mean?” 

A memory flashes through his mind, seemingly triggered by her question. A woman – he’s pretty sure it’s his mother – tells a younger, less vicious, less scarred, less brainwashed version of him that the words on his skin belong to the person he’s destined to be with. His soulmate. 

The words are barely audible as they force their way out of his mouth, but he knows she’s heard them. “I think it knows that we’re meant to be together.” 

Her face twitches but he can’t tell what she’s feeling. Hesitatingly, he asks her a question, although he doesn’t really expect her to have an answer.

“What do we do?”

Silence fills the room once again and then three words leave her mouth, three words that will change his life and hers forever.

“We could run.”

***

So they run. And they don’t stop running until they’ve reached a long abandoned Hydra safehouse that feels at least somewhat safe. The girl – his soulmate – patches up a cut in his side that he didn’t even feel before, and as he stares down at her, he realizes that he doesn’t even know he name. 

“Lida.”

He flinches a little, because it feels like she’s read his mind, and he’s made too many bad experiences with people digging around in his mind, but then he sees the small smile on her lips as she looks up to him.

“I think my name is Lida.”, she adds. “But they didn’t want me to remember it.”

There’s pain in her voice and his own name comes back to him as naturally as if it has always been there.

“Bucky.”

His mouth curls into a smile and slowly, very slowly, he reaches out with his flesh hand and brushes across the Russian words that mark her collarbone. They are faded, as if someone tried to erase them, but under his touch they start glowing in a bright, pure silver.

“You jeopardized the whole mission.”, he repeats his words from earlier, and then he can’t speak anymore because her lips are on his. 

The kiss is sloppy, desperate, and they cling to each other like they could be torn apart any moment. Bucky’s hands are around her waist, Lida’s hands are around his neck, and they practically melt into each other’s touch until no one can possibly tell where he’s ending and she’s beginning. 

Later, Bucky has his arms – both the flesh and the metal one – wrapped around Lida’s naked body. Her breathing is soft, regular, and in this moment he swears to himself that he’ll never meet her as the Soldier again.

***

The first time Bucky tells this story, five years later, he’s sitting in the Avengers tower. Lida’s head is in his lap and he’s absentmindedly playing with her hair while the other Avengers are spread across the room. 

He doesn’t really remember how they got to the topic of soulmates, but by now Clint and Natasha have told the story of their first meeting, Stark has gushed about Pepper until everyone begged him to stop, Thor has made them laugh with the story of how Jane hit him with a truck when they first met, Steve has kept suspiciously silents and Bruce has told everyone about his words that no one has said to him yet.

It’s Bucky’s turn now, and he looks down at Lida with a smirk in his lips. “Do you wanna tell ‘em, doll, or should I?” 

She gives a lazy grin. “Knock yourself out, Buck.” 

He looks at her, at the mark that peeks down under the collar of her shirt, and then he takes a deep breath and starts talking. 

“I was the Soldier when I first met her.”


End file.
